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Thursday, November 10, 2016

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Episode 22 (Skin of Evil)

Note: This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

Warning: I’m about to give away major details about the plot. If you want to be surprised, don’t read this review.

The Enterprise is supposed to meet Counselor Troi, who’s coming back
from a conference. The shuttle crashes on a near-by planet, but the
Enterprise can’t make it in time since they’re working on the warp
drive. When they do get there, the shuttle has already crashed. Troi is
all right, but the pilot is badly injured.

A landing party
beams down to attend to Troi. When they get there, they find this big
puddle of some sort of black liquid. The puddle is able to move to block
their access to the shuttle. When Data points out that it may be a life
form, it addresses them. It reveals its name to be Armus and says that
it won’t allow access to Troi. When Chief of Security Tasha Yar tries to
go to the shuttlecraft anyway, Armus kills her with an energy blast. The landing party beams up, but Dr. Crusher can’t do anything for
her; Yar dies.

The remaining members of the landing party
return to negotiate with Armus, who has been tormenting Troi while they
were away. He seems to take pleasure in hurting people, but grows bored
quickly. He engulfs Riker and tortures him. He also uses Data to point a
phaser at the other members of the landing party. Eventually, Picard
beams down and is able to enrage Armus enough to let the Enterprise beam
both him and Troi back to the Enterprise.

This episode is the
epitome of everything that was wrong with the first season. First off,
the effects were horrible. When Armus is seen moving, the effect is very
cheesy. I can’t even describe to you how cheap it looks. It’s like it
was airbrushed on or something. Also, after Yar is brought into sickbay,
you can see what I assume is blood. It looks like Halloween makeup that
someone found in a remainder bin at a dollar store. It not only looks
fake, but it looks cheap. I guess they ran out of effects money.

The idea of pure evil is interesting, but they should have held this
episode until they could write it better. Armus is what you might call a
one-dimensional villain. His only purpose is to kill Yar. I understand
that it was at her request, but if she had made that request just a
little earlier, she could have been killed off in the previous episode.
At least for a senseless death, it would have been at least believable. A
lot of the first-season episodes missed the mark in terms of writing,
but this one was way off. If I were to make an analogy to playing darts,
this is the attempt that misses the board completely and hits someone
where the sun doesn’t shine.

There’s also one major mistake
that a lot of people have pointed out. After Armus engulfs Riker, Armus
covers the shuttle. However, Armus remains very flat. There’s no lump
that would be big enough to be Riker. What happened to Riker?

One thing of note is that this episode aired out of order. Episode 23
aired before this one did because the anti-drug message of “Symbiosis”
appealed to Denise Crosby. She wanted to appear in that one, so the
powers that be decided to hold off on airing this one. However, the
episodes are numbered (and sold on VHS) according to production order.
This is why the episode where she dies comes before another episode where she lives.

Other than the fact that Yar dies, this episode has nothing
of any real interest. Not only can you skip this episode, but I also
would have recommended that the series do the same. As I said, Yar’s
death could have been put in another episode, making this one
meaningless. Even if this episode comes on TV, you’re better off reading
a book.